58 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 21, 2015
to convict, Dubon-Gutierrez said, "I think
if the defense had, maybe, played their
part, it would have been a lot harder."
Hafiz is in a federal medical center
in Butner, North Carolina, where
he has been treated for several medical
conditions, including asthma and skin in-
fections. He communicates mostly by find-
ing other prisoners who speak Urdu or Ar-
abic. When I spoke to him recently, with
the help of a Pashto translator, I asked if
he believed that he had broken the law.
He rejected the question: "If sending
money is a crime, then people all around
the world are committing a crime! They
proved that I sent money, not that I sent
money to bad guys. I believe the Amer-
ican legal system will do justice in my
case. I believe that the United States was
built on the basis of equality and justice
and it will always be against unfairness."
I asked him why he had said awful
things about Americans---about the
Army helicopter crash and "fifty thou-
sand" more deaths.
"When Americans died, I talked about
it, but I never spoke against them," he
said. That was spin, and he didn't try to
defend it much. He wanted me to un-
derstand that his real focus was the Pa-
kistani government. "I was angry at the
Pakistani Army, because it doesn't get
proper information before it starts shoot-
ing people on their missions," he said.
"You will cry if you do your own research
and find out what they have done to in-
nocent civilians."
I asked if he could have done any-
thing to avoid where he is today.
"I have done nothing wrong," he said.
"The only thing that I might have done
wrong was saying things in anger."
Last fall, Hafiz's lawyers appealed the
verdict to the Eleventh Circuit Court of
Appeals, arguing that the failure of the
video link and disputes about translation
prevented them from mounting a full
defense. In July, a three-judge panel up-
held the conviction. The case remains
on appeal.
With so much attention on Hafiz and
his sons, it was easy to forget that two
other members of the family---Hafiz's
daughter Amina and his grandson Alam
Zeb---remain under indictment, as does
the shopkeeper. They are unlikely to see
an American courtroom. Pakistani au-
thorities interrogated and released them.
A Pakistani intelligence bureau searched
for militant ties to Zeb, but "did not have
anything against him," according to a U.S.
prosecutor's report of the inquiry. Zeb,
who was seventeen when he was indicted,
is now in his second year of medical school.
He had been scheduled to testify when
the video link went down. By phone from
Peshawar, with the help of a translator,
he told me, "I heard the whole complaint
against us, and I thought, This is just bi-
zarre. America is such a big country with
such big cities, and while there are all
these big terrorists in Pakistan, they're
leaving them alone and going after us?"
He suspects that American prosecu-
tors didn't understand the context of
what they were hearing on the wiretaps,
when the Khans cursed the Army. Zeb
said, "If you go back to 2008 and ask any
Swati, anyone from Swat, you'd have
found that they were all upset with the
Army. The way they were carrying on,
lots of ordinary people were dying, were
being destroyed, were being damaged.
Their conflict was with the Taliban, but
the Taliban weren't the ones dying---the
common people were dying. So we were
distraught---'Why are you killing us?' "
I asked if Zeb thought he would ever
be able to come to the U.S. "Sir, if you
look at all my phone calls, I had told my
grandfather over and over that I want to
come to America," he said. "I want to
study there. I want to become a good
doctor. I had said that. But I didn't un-
derstand that America could put together
a case like this against us. What kind of
people would do that?"
Late at night, after his wife and kids
have gone to bed, Irfan Khan lis-
tens to wiretapped phone calls from the
case. Since his release, he has stopped
watching movies and sitcoms and started
analyzing the evidence and sorting an-
notated transcripts into color-coded Excel
files.The more that Irfan thought about
his experience---the career interrupted,
the hundreds of strip searches, the iso-
lation of his wife---the more he felt
wronged. Searching for his name online
still brings up articles about terrorism.
A bank had recently closed savings ac-
counts that he had opened for himself
and his children, and it declined to ex-
plain why.
Irfan has sued the government for ma-
licious prosecution; his lawyer, Michael
Hanna, claims that the authorities de-
tained Irfan for ten months based on "in-
tentional or reckless disregard for the
truth." Government lawyers have replied
that Irfan was properly arrested on the
basis of probable cause, but they rejected
Hanna's requests to hand over documents,
citing national-security concerns.Two fed-
eral judges have faulted the government
for unnecessary delays. A senior F.B.I.
o cial told me recently that the bureau
considers the Khan case a success: "Now,
it wasn't the success we wanted to get. We
would have liked to have gotten all three."
He went on, "I would argue that the Khan
case was a successful use of resources. We
didwhatwehadtodo.Wetookitasfar
as the evidence would allow us to take it,
both from a deterrent factor, as well as en-
forcing the law."
I asked Irfan why he stayed in Amer-
ica. Why not go back to Pakistan? He
laughed. After his stint in custody, peo-
ple there would assume that he had struck
a deal, he said. "Whether it's your fam-
ily or the police or the military or just
the local people, they'll assume that you're
working for either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I."
Besides, his son, who was born in Flor-
ida, visited Pakistan before kindergarten
and declared that he is never going back.
"He said, 'There's a lot of dust.' "
Irfan is driving a taxi again. He is
working the day shift,5 A.M. to 5 P.M.,
for Super Yellow Cab, driving a Crown
Victoria that used to be a police car and
still has a chrome spotlight on the left
side of the windshield. If you don't know
his story, it's di cult to distinguish Khan
from his peers. To a passenger in the
back seat, he is black hair, ear buds, and
the collar of a golf shirt.
From behind the wheel, Irfan marks
time by noting changes in the cityscape---
what's going up, what's coming down.
Now and then, he passes the old federal
building on Brickell Avenue, where he
became a citizen, sixteen years ago.
"Somebody told me that they want to
knock down that building. I was kind of
sad," he said. He remembers taking the
oath for citizenship. "I held up my end
of the bargain, but they didn't hold up
theirs." He went on, "You advertise it to
the whole world: Hey, we're the best
country, we're the best nation, we're the
best justice system. If you think about it,
the whole purpose of this country was
to protect people like us."